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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795709">Herbert West Headcanons</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicaldork/pseuds/musicaldork'>musicaldork</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Agender Character, Bonding, F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Headcanon, Humor, Imagines, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Romantic Friendship, Scenarios, i generally try to keep the reader genderneutral unless asked for otherwise!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:48:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,287</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795709</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicaldork/pseuds/musicaldork</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Herbert West x reader headcanons, as requested by others!</p><p>Requests are open - check me out at my tumblr, dorkfanfic! ^^</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Herbert West/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Enthuastic, wildly chaotic lab helper S/O</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <strong>Request: Herbert with a lab partner best friend who is sweet and hyper-interested in human experimentation - with an enthusiasm for dispatching rogue 'experiments'!</strong>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>People honestly wonder how on earth the two of you can stand each other.<br/>
The dynamic between the two of you is straight up cartoonish in its unhinged comedy. <br/>
<br/>
(...I’m thinking Pinky and the Brain, but there’s a lot more cartoonish duos that probably fit the bill too.)</p><p>Somehow, you two make it work.</p><p>---</p><p>At first Herbert thinks of having you around as a necessary evil. You help him with experiments and keep him safer than he would be alone. You’re incredibly useful - if a little excitable.</p><p>It’s pretty demeaning, but he probably thinks of you a little bit like a lab puppy at first - just with how curious and hyper you are all the time.</p><p>…We all know that he isn’t exactly great with pets lol.</p><p>---</p><p>The first time you beat the absolute <em>SHIT </em>out of an unruly experiment, cackling and chasing it gleefully around the cramped space of the basement - makeshift weapon in hand - he’s at once horrified <em>and </em>impressed.</p><p>Wiping smudges of blood splatter off of the lens of his glasses and seeing you smiling cheerfully over at him, blunt, bloodied weaponry raised triumphantly to the ceiling, Herbert makes a mental note to never get on your bad side. </p><p>He feels an odd mix of deep concern and strong, reluctant admiration.</p><p>I mean, goddamn. You really are something else, alright.</p><p>---</p><p>You’re so cheerful and excited to prod around in dead bodies. It’s like the most morbid birthday gift for you, to be able to explore somebody’s innards, see how they tick biologically.</p><p>I mean, sure he does that with bodies, but he’s not so… excited by it - it’s just an engaging necessity. </p><p>It feels like an incredibly macabre party whenever you’re around, but he grows fond of it, strangely enough.</p><p>---</p><p>You start to rub off on him. <em>But </em>if anyone points out that he’s more lively than usual or - <em>god forbid</em> - acting a little <em>sweeter </em>to others because of you, he’ll deny it to hell and back.</p><p>And hey, I bet you kinda bring out the mad scientist in him even further. I mean, he definitely already is one - but that percentage of unhinged feral energy inside him? Jumps right out.</p><p>(Dan is shaking in his boots upstairs probably. Now he’s got two mad scientists to deal with. Help him.)</p><p>---</p><p>If you’re always interested with experiments, when you’re close enough to him, you can throw him outlandish possibilities for fixes; solutions and ideas that he never would’ve ever thought of himself.</p><p>He’s so grounded in science that you possibly not being as shackled by it would actually be pretty helpful sometimes.</p><p>This man is so far up his own brain he gets stuck in it sometimes. </p><p>Drag him out kicking and screaming (<em>metaphorically </em>- or not, I don’t know your life) - if you must.</p><p>---</p><p>Y’all are absolutely friends. He’d never use a word so juvenile, but damn, he’d probably still call you his lab assistant even if you got married, lmao. But don’t get it twisted - you are friends.</p><p>Your oddities and curiosities compliment one another perfectly.<br/>
Romance or no, you two are like an old married couple, it’s wild.</p><p>And well, if nothing else it, it goes to show that there’s someone for everybody - even if your social lives are more busied with the recently deceased rather than the average concerns of the run-of-the-mill living.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Agender S/O who loves art</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em> <strong>Request: Herbert with an agender S/O who really likes art!</strong> </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>You’re outside of the box of convention.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re so creative, and you have the courage to accept yourself just as you are.<br/>
You are entirely who you are meant to be. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He didn’t realise how much he’d appreciate that in someone until he met you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>—</em>
</p><p>Now, Herbert may be a… socially abrasive person - to say the very least - but he’d respect the fuck outta your gender and pronouns after you told him. </p><p>Y’know that passage from the novelisation where he’s basically like… ‘fuck prejudiced people, they have no rights - especially not the right to live forever, fuck em’? Same energy.</p><p>Whether you told him right after meeting him, or later on in knowing you, he’d just look at you with the same impassive stare, nod a little then turn back to his experiment, asking you to help him mess around with a couple of severed body parts or something.</p><p>He probably wouldn’t give it too much gravitas, it’d just be another thing. But sometimes quiet, steadfast acceptance like that can be really refreshing.</p><p>And you know that he cares about you, though you’d be hard-pressed to get him to admit it. He’d never let you stay around as much as you did if not. </p><p>So you settle back into routine, the only tweak to your time spent together is if you’ve told him you want him to use a new name or different pronouns.</p><p>He’s really receptive to changes like that. That big brain of his is good for more things than just bringing total monstrosities back from the dead, lol. </p><p>There’s like, a near 0% chance of him slipping up and misgendering or deadnaming you after you tell him.</p><p>Even if it takes more time for others to get used to the change, Herbert basically has a box in his brain that’s just information about you which he updates frequently.</p><p>This is just another mental note for his (<em>‘totally normal and not weird’…</em>) fixation on you.</p><p>—</p><p>Herbert would verbally berate anybody who gave you shit for being agender, tearing them down with facts about how the simplified idea of ‘parts and chromosomes’ from a dumbass who never progressed further than high school science is so idiotic and reductive and how wrong the eurocentric ideal of gender is and- </p><p>You’ll have to shut him up and/or drag him away from the argument, you really will. </p><p>Also psst… If he gets his ass beat for running his mouth just a little too much on your behalf, you should totally patch him up afterwards.</p><p>He won’t say it but he’ll be grateful for it. </p><p>Herbert’ll be like the worst knight in bloodstained armour in the world, but we love him for it.</p><p>—</p><p>One thing you can do that would fluster the hell out of him is showing him pictures that you’ve drawn of him. </p><p>He wouldn’t be weirded out by it, because he has his fair share of intently examining you, s’not like he’s one to talk.</p><p>No matter what you thought of your work, he’d be genuinely so impressed with it??? Like wow… you created that, conjured that image out of nothing with only your hands and the tools you have to draw with… That’s the kind of thing that’s so far out of his realm of expertise, he looks at it like you’ve spun threads of gold for him.</p><p>Whether you draw expressive cartoons or realism, people or animals or scenery, all of it captures something so precise that… well, I’m not going to say that he swoons over it, but he totally does swoon over it. Sorry not sorry.</p><p>You know that this man will not leave his work. But on the rare occasions where you can pull him away - maybe on your birthday or something - you might spend your time trawling art galleries (probably not museums because I’m always super mad about looting and art theft). </p><p>It’s… really nice to marvel at the works by his side.</p><p>He’s a science man but he can appreciate the beauty in a nice piece of artwork. </p><p>And if you slide your arm into his, or interlace your fingers with his, he wouldn’t complain at all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I don't write Herbert West fanfic (or much fanfic at all) anymore, but I realised I had this draft chapter saved. I thought I had already posted it but I guess it slipped my attention. So... here it is.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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